Monday, December 28, 2009

Traditions VS Reform

Semantics is a big problem when talking about the reform of the Church. It is an axiom of Church discipline that the Church is always in need of reform, as it says in Lumen Gentium 8. But the ideas of what "reform" means to different people are so widely varied that at this point it is almost useless to speak of reform unless you are speaking with somebody who already agrees with you. There is a big difference between the reform imagined by Luther and Melancthon and the reform envisioned by St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. This ought to lead us to ask ourselves: what does it really mean to reform the Catholic religion?


Authentic Catholic reform is always viewed in terms of a going back to our roots. Not in the false and superficial way proposed by the heresy of archaeologism, wherein we simply shed whatever legitimate and organic developments came after the patristic period, but the kind of going back to our roots where we are consistently measuring our lives and spirituality against the level set by Christ and seeing if it measures up. We look to Christ's message, and also to how it was lived out by the great saints who came before us. This is why these people are saints: by their lives and holiness they witness to the truth and power of Christ's message and serve as worthy examples for all of us to emulate. True Catholic reform means we reevaluate our modern course of action in light of the heroes of ages past and bring ourselves back to that perennial standard, just as Teresa of Avila wanted to emulate the early hermits and St. Francis wanted to live in poverty as the Apostles. True Catholic reform takes the fullness of all that was good about the past and reconstitutes it in the present for the glory of God and the life of the Church. This was the mentality of the Counter-Reformation and the work of St. Ignatius Loyola.


But what about the other definition of reform, the one used by progressive Catholics? To them, reform usually means a break from the past. This "reform" often is a code-word for a radical break with what came before, which is viewed as time-bound, too ritualistic and superstitious for modern man. This view of reform means that we reevaluate the past in light of the present, and we jettison from our Tradition whatever does not meet the perceived tastes and needs of modern man. For example, take this blog Progressive Catholic Reflections, which calls for "Twenty Church Reforms." Now, I am all for reform, but what reform does he have in mind? Well, listed among his twenty reforms are the ordination of women priests, the imposition of democratic elections of bishops, and the giving of more authority to local episcopal conferneces and synods (God forbid!). So, these ideas of reform are clearly not the same thing as the ideal of reform posed by the great saints and doctors of our glorious history. For some, reform means throwing out things, deciding what to pitch and what to keep, as if we were cleaning out an old garage full of junk. What a tragic ecclesiological view that sees God's Church not as a temple filled with treasures but as a garage in need of spring cleaning!


I do not believe I am saying anything new hear, but merely explicating what we have all noticed and been irritated with for years. All of the atrocities carried out in the name of reform, all of the altars removed, the tables set up, the heresy preached, the discipline relaxed, all in the name of a false and vain reform! Let's return to a true Catholic vision of reform, one in which we do not seek to throw away the past because it does not conform to our depraved and deviant generation, but one which weeps over the sins of our generation and humbly begs God for the grace to live up to the stature and example set by the heroes of old.


Our reform is more of a renovation, or a restoration, like a man who buys an old Victorian house and restores all of the original woodwork and trim and paints it anew so that all can enjoy the beauty that it had when it was young. On the other hand, the progressive "reform" is like a man who buys an old Victorian house, demolishes it, and builds a crappy little Pulte house in place of it that looks like every other house in the world, all the while insisting that it is "basically the same house." Our reform of the Church is nothing other than the restoration of her great heritage.


St. Teresa de Avila, ora pro nobis!
Posted by BONIFACE at 9:49 AM
Labels: Tradition

Where we all should be going, "back to the pre-VaticanII"

PREPARING FOR CONFIRMATION: THE RIGHT WAY
A good friend of mine is preparing his son (age 9) for Confirmation next Spring in the Old Rite under the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). The text being used for kids 9-12 is the “Baltimore Catechism #2: Explained by Fr. Bennet Kelley, C.P.” (Catholic Book Publishing Corp.). The teenagers and adults in the class are using the “Baltimore Catechism #3: Father Connell’s Confraternity Edition.” (The Seraphim Company, Inc.) An additional book is used, “Preparation for Confirmation According to the Baltimore Catechism” by Angelus Press.

I cannot say enough about the quality of these books. For teenagers and adults, the Baltimore Catechism #3 is hands down the greatest “piece of gear” (a Marine Corps term) ever devised in English for teaching the Faith. It will put to shame anything currently available. Most of the post Vatican II books were and are absolutely horrendous, having watered down the Faith to almost complete irrelevance.

I would urge those of you who do not have these great tools, to buy them for your home and your family, especially those with kids! The best place around to find these are Tan Books, and the Angelus Press (www.angeluspress.org).
posted by PreVat2

Sunday, December 27, 2009

No abortions would be better!

By Kathleen Gilbert

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com )- Now that the health care bill has made it out of the U.S. Senate, only one more revision stands between it and President Obama's desk – but once again the most troubling section appears to be the language governing abortion funding, which could still bring about the legislation’s ultimate demise.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) re-affirmed this week that he is holding together a group of conservative Democrats who have pledged to take down any version of the bill that contains government funding for abortion, which the Senate version does.

“Well, if all the issues are resolved and we’re down to the pro-life view or, I should say, no public funding for abortion, there’s at least 10 to 12 members who have said, repeatedly, unless this language is fixed and current law is maintained, and no public funding for abortion," Stupak told CNSnews.com Tuesday. "There’s 10 or 12 of us, and they only passed the bill by 3 votes, so they’re going to be short 8 to 9, maybe 6 to 8 votes. So they [Democrats] do not have the votes to pass it in the House.”

The House's expectations for health reform are set to clash with the Senate's on a variety of issues, particularly the public option and a surtax on the wealthy. While House Democrat leaders seem willing to compromise on these issues the liberal members of their party are less convinced. "The Senate health care bill is not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago," wrote Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) Wednesday in an op-ed for CNN.com .

But the abortion issue raises perhaps the most clear-cut objection to the final bill version. A slew of false compromises and proposed funds-segregating schemes has been unable to silence objections to the legislation’s treatment of abortion in all stages of the bill's development.

In a Politico piece Tuesday, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) reaffirmed that the Senate health bill has thrown the Hyde amendment "to the winds and, with it, the hard-fought efforts of Henry Hyde and the pro-life movement to maintain this basic protection for the unborn."

"If the issue of abortion funding brings down this bill, it will be a victory for the cause of protecting innocent human life," wrote Brownback. "That would be an irony that Henry Hyde would have greatly appreciated."

Nonetheless, Stupak acknowledged that his Democrats were "under a lot of pressure" from the White House to keep mum about the abortion issue - pressure that may explain the sudden capitulation of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) Friday evening after weeks of holding tough for Hyde-amendment language.

Instead of a Hyde-amendment ban on abortion funding, the Senate bill's abortion language offered by Sen. Nelson gives states the ability to opt out of providing insurance cover for abortions, and institutes a funds-segregating scheme for premium dollars that go to abortion. Also, as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted in an interview with BlogHer Monday, all members of the new health insurance exchange will still be required to pay into abortion under the Senate bill.

Organizations such as Planned Parenthood and NOW have expressed opposition to the Nelson language. However, some suspect that the abortion lobby is simply bolstering the image of the Nelson language as a "compromise," similar to the half-hearted objections they raised to the House's Ellsworth amendment. Tellingly, abortion groups have not encouraged campaigning against the language, in stark contrast to their massive uprising against the House's Stupak language.

"I would chalk up NOW's opposition as token outrage to help abortion amendment (sic) seem like an actual compromise. As a Democratic aide wrote today:'Pro-choice Dems are cool with it;' that includes Barbara Boxer and Maria Cantwell Patty Murray," wrote John McCormack on the Weekly Standard blog.

On the other side, leaders of the pro-life lobby such as the National Right to Life Committee have hotly rejected the language as entirely inadequate, and are calling for the demise of the bill. "The new abortion language solves none of the fundamental abortion-related problems with the Senate bill, and it actually creates some new abortion-related problems," said the NRLC's Douglas Johnson, who called Nelson's language "light years removed" from the Stupak-Pitts amendment.

A Quinnipac poll this week showed overwhelming public opposition to government funding of abortion, by 72%-23%.

The Family Research Council noted that both the Senate and House bills are "seriously flawed," as both "still allow rationing of health care for seniors, raise health costs for families, mandate that families purchase under threat of fines and penalties, offer counsel about assisted suicide in some states, do not offer broad conscience protections for health care workers and seek to insert the federal government into all aspects of citizen's lives."

The timetable for the bill's future remains uncertain. Speaking to her fellow House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi projected a best-case scenario would place a final passage by the end of January or the beginning of February.

In anticipating the Democrats' strategy for getting the bill to the finish line, John Fund at the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday warned that "Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi would love to come up with a way to bash heads in private and skip any public discussion that further reveals just how incoherent and unworkable both the bills are."

"Luckily," he continued, "there is a subterfuge readily available that wouldn't require the House to swallow the Senate's bill unchanged but also ducks the traditional give-and-take of the conference committee" - namely, skipping the conference committee and dumping one version of the bill to give the other an all-or-nothing shot at becoming law.

In this case, since Sen. Reid appears to walk a thinner tightrope in keeping together enough votes for passage, the House version could be almost entirely discarded - and the Stupak Hyde-amendment language would go with it.

"Serious dialogue isn't what Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid are interested in right now," wrote Fund. If leaders decide to skip the conference, he said, "it will be the latest example of violating principles of transparency and accountability in the single-minded pursuit of legislative victory."

Friday, December 18, 2009

Talk about corruption, and dishonesty!

Despite clear evidence of corruption in the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia denial is underway
One Climategate Email Trumps All the Denials
By Dr. Tim Ball Thursday, December 17, 2009
Despite clear evidence of corruption in the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia denial is underway. But they cannot deny the contents of one email.

It was from Tom Wigley, CRU, to Michael Mann on June 25, 2009. Mann was worried about a call to testify at a Congressional hearing organized by the Chairs of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick’s (M&M) challenge to the hockey stick science.

Mike,

There are broader implications of this, so it is important to respond well. This is serious. They are on to us and you are batting for the team. It is a pity you have to be the guinea pig after what you have gone through already, but you have many supporters. Earlier emails determine McIntyre is a liar with an agenda and his attacks are wrong and unfair. They consistently portray themselves as victims. I would not advise a legal route. Wise, because AGW claims don’t bear legal scrutiny. It also implies guilt. I think you need to consider this as just another set of referees’ comments and respond simply, clearly and directly. But now they were not selecting the referees. These comments are unnecessary if you’re telling the truth. They are also parental in their tone, but Wigley is the grandfather of CRU, the IPCC and the entire climate science manipulation.

On the science side the key point is that the M&M criticisms are unfounded. It was clear they did not understand McIntyre and McKitrick’s challenge as this confirms. Although this may be difficult, remember that this is not really a criticism of you personally, but one aspect of a criticism of the foundations of global warming science by people both inside and outside of Congress who have ulterior motives. Wigley reassures, but he can’t accept there are legitimate scientific questions. A scientist believing the science is settled is troubling. There may, in fact, be an opportunity here. As you know, we suspect that there has been an abuse of the scientific review process at the journal editor level. The method is to choose reviewers who are sympathetic to the anti-greenhouse view. These last two comments are incredible. He is accusing others illegality, but it is precisely what they were doing. Recent papers in GRL (including the M&M paper) have clearly not been reviewed by appropriate people. Who are “appropriate people”? The ones they choose. Wigley ultimately got the GRL editor James Saiers fired.

Concerns about Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) were firmly entrenched and their ability to block other publications well established. Mar 31, 2004 Jones wrote to Mann,“Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.”

We have a strong suspicion that this is the case, but, of course, no proof because we do not know *who* the reviewers of these papers have been. This was the charge made against those editors who published the articles the CRU gang produced. They refused to disclose the reviewers. The emails detail how they made sure “appropriate” reviewers were provided, knowing they would not be revealed. Perhaps now is the time to make this a direct accusation and request (or demand) that this information be made available.

If I were on the greenhouse deniers’ side, I would be inclined to focus on the wide range of paleo results and the differences between them as an argument for dismissing them all. Who are these people? There never were any who denied the greenhouse effect. Consider the illogic of this. Here he is playing Devils advocate and using the same illogic in all his other suggested defenses. He is saying, although all the other paleo constructions generally agree he would argue that they are all wrong. Amazing. I attach also a run with MAGICC using central-estimate climate nmodel parameters (DT2x = 2.6 degC, etc.—see the TAR), and forcings used by Caspar in the runs with paleo-CSM. I have another Figure somewhere that compares MAGICC with paleo-CSM.
The agreement is nearly perfect (given that CSM has internally generated noise while MAGICC is pure signal). The support for the hockey stick is not just the paleo reconstructions, but also the model results. They ignore the failure of models to recreate past climate conditions (validation). In several instances they accept model results over real data. As Dr Roy Spencer wrote,”But most of the talks presented followed the recipe that has become all too common in recent years: analyze the output of climate models that predict substantial global warming, and simply assume the models are somewhere near correct.” If one takes the best estimates of past forcing off the shelf, then the model results show the hockey stick shape.
But these are models that don’t include major forcings such as the Milankovitch Effect of changing Sun/Earth relationships. No tuning or fudging here; this is a totally independent analysis, and critics of the paleo data, if they disbelieve these data, have to explain why models get the same result. Because they’re programmed the same and leave out most forcings. Of course, von Storch’s model results do not show such good century timescale agreement, but this is because he uses silly forcing and has failed to account for the fact that his model was not in equilibrium at the start of the run (the subject of Tim Osborn et al.‘s submitted paper). This is a pain in the but (sic), but it will all work out well in the end (unintentional pun - sorry). How dare they ask questions? Good science will prevail. Finally an accurate comment, but as with all Wigley’s introverted expectations not as he anticipated. Best wishes.

Safe Abortions?

December 17, 2009

New Paper Links UN Promotion of "Safe" Abortion to Maternal Deaths
By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.


(NEW YORK – C-FAM) A recent submission to the United Nations (UN) Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) provides evidence of the potentially fatal consequences of "safe" abortion promoted by UN agencies, and includes a list of 113 studies linking abortion dangerous complications such as pre-term birth in subsequent pregnancies.

"The encouragement by [the UN Population Fund] UNFPA and [the World Health Organization] WHO of the use of mifepristone (RU-486, Mifegyne) and misoprostol (Cytotec) as ‘safe’ abortifacients in medically resource poor nations is unconscionable" the paper says, "and a violation of the human right to health of women."

Submitted by Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) [publisher of the Friday Fax] and authored by Donna Harrison, M.D., President of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), the paper calls on the Human Rights Council "to defend the right to bodily integrity of all human beings from fertilization to natural death" and "refrain [from] supporting in law and policy measures…empirically proven to hurt rather than help pregnant women."

The paper reports that "in the first three years of 'safe' mifepristone (Mifegyne) abortions in the United States…one third of the women with adverse events (237) experienced severe bleeding requiring emergency surgery, half of these required hospitalization, and forty two women bled over half of their blood volume." What is more, a WHO study showed that "one out of every five women who had ‘safe’ misoprostol abortions failed to abort and required surgical intervention." In poor countries where women do not have access to emergency care or even skilled birth attendants, the paper concludes, "these events would be fatal."

WHO studies show that the top killers of women in childbirth are bleeding, hypertensive disorders, anemia and sepsis. Abortion – including "spontaneous abortion" or miscarriage – is tenth on the list and accounts for 5% of deaths. The paper says "it is scientifically, medically, and morally unacceptable to divert resources" from what is really needed to save women’s lives: skilled birth attendants and emergency obstetric care.

The leaders of UN member states explicitly rejected inclusion of "Universal Access to Reproductive Health" in the outcome document of the 2005 World Summit, the paper reports, because it "included a target to eliminate ‘unsafe’ abortion," which some UN bureaucrats "defined as any abortion in a country where abortion was not legal." Even though member states rejected the goal, "the monitoring mechanisms for achievement of [Millennium Development Goal] MDG 5 have nevertheless implicitly incorporated the targets related to that rejected goal" which amounts to "cultural imperialism" that "deprives member nations of their right and duty to evaluate medical and policy effects of induced abortion within their own religious, cultural, and regional contexts" the paper says.

The submission to OHCHR was made in response to its request for information relevant to a thematic study on "Preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and human rights," which was called for in a UN Human Rights Council resolution last June. One veteran UN observer told the Friday Fax he welcomed the submission by C-FAM and AAPLOG, commenting that it helps address the paucity of alternative viewpoints

Viva Italia

December 17, 2009

Italian Supreme Court Decision Signals Sovereign Resistance to European Overreach
By Piero A. Tozzi, J.D.


(NEW YORK – C-FAM) A little-publicized decision by Italy's Constitutional Court last month may have significant implications concerning the direction of Europe, strengthening national sovereignty as a bulwark against transnational overreach by European institutions. It also signals the continued importance of national constitutions, despite the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty earlier this month.

In Sentenza N. 311, the Italian Constitutional Court stated that where rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) conflict with provisions of the Italian Constitution, such rulings "lack legitimacy." Sources close to the Italian judiciary told the Friday Fax that the decision was intended as a warning that activist rulings by the Strasbourg-based ECHR overstepping jurisdictional boundaries will not be given deference.

Sources point to the timing of the decision, which followed an early November ECHR ruling, Lautsi v. Italy, directing that crucifixes be removed from the Italian classroom. The Italian government is appealing that decision to the full Grand Chamber.

According to Roger Kiska, European legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, Lautsi is flawed on a number of grounds, including overreach – the ECHR is not a constitutional court – and its disregard for "the cultural sovereignty of each Member State." The Constitutional Court decision – which deals with civil service matters entirely unrelated to the crucifix case – signals that Italy may be prepared to break with the ECHR if it were to lose its appeal.

Kiska also notes that the ECHR recently heard arguments in the case A, B, & C v. Ireland, which involves a direct challenge to Ireland's constitutional protection of unborn life. The Italian court decision could embolden Ireland's Supreme Court in the event of an adverse decision.

Underlying the debate is the question of what role "subsidiarity" will play in post-Lisbon Europe. Subsidiarity is the notion that decisions are best made at the local level closest to the people affected by them, guaranteeing that national norms and values will not be overrun by top-down-dictates.

Observers note that the foundational documents of a united Europe – the 1957 Treaties of Rome establishing the European Economic Community – enshrine the concept of subsidiarity, and a protocol to the Lisbon Treaty states that European institutions shall "ensure constant respect for the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality."

By asserting that Italy's Constitution is the final word when confronted with decisions by transnationalist bodies, the Constitutional Court is drawing a line in the sand similar to that drawn by the United States (US) Supreme Court in 2008, when it rejected a directive from the World Court in The Hague as incompatible with the US Constitution.

Italy has two High Courts – one dealing with constitutional issues, and a second, the Corte Suprema di Cassazione, which is the court of final resort on all issues other than those with constitutional implications. The ECHR, a Council of Europe body, is distinct from the European Court of Justice, which is the European Union's highest court

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Get on Board and fight Pro-Abortion

Dear Fighter for the Unborn Child,

The Fourth World Conference on Women took place in Beijing, China 15 years ago. It was one of the great battles that pitted the anti-life feminists against the Catholic Church and the pro-life movement.

The enemies of unborn life tried at Beijing to get an international right to abortion. They LOST because pro-lifers defeated them.

Now, fifteen years later they are back.

In March 2010 — a mere 90 days from now — thousands of radical feminists will gather at UN headquarters in New York and try to make up what they lost then and have continued to lose.

These radical feminists will come from such awful organizations as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the National Organization for Women, NARAL Pro-Choice America and the worst of the worst,“Catholics” for Choice.

They will be joined by such powerful entities as the UN bureaucracy, pro-abortion UN agencies like UNFPA and sadly UNICEF, the combined might of the European Union and the World Health Organization.

They will be supported by billionaires like George Soros and huge foundations like Hewlett and Packard, Ford, Rockefeller and all the rest of the rogues-gallery of anti-lifers hard left.

There will be pro-lifers there, pro-lifers from around the world. And they will be fighting back. But they will be surrounded, outspent and outmanned.

We expect a desperate fight for two weeks in March.

And right in the middle of this fight will be the Friday Fax.

As those two weeks progress, it is likely that the only source of pro-life news coming out of that building will be from the Friday Fax. But oh what a megaphone is the Friday Fax!

We now have 200,000 subscribers. By then, I will be announcing an additional 50,000-100,000 new subscribers.

Not only will we be right in the thick of this nasty conference, we will be telling you EVERYTHING THAT IS HAPPENING.

What I am here to ask you is for your prayers, starting right now for the success in our battle against the anti-lifers at Beijing+15. Pray for the bravery of pro-life diplomats! There are many and they need your help. Pray for their courage in standing up to the world’s pro-abortion elite — those lovers of death.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Commander in Chief? Of What? Toilets?

Cheerleader in Chief
by Wayne Simmons
12/10/2009


At no time in recent American military history has a speech delivered by a President of the United States done so much to distance our nation from victory and put the men and woman of the military and intelligence agencies in harm’s way.

President Obama’s big Afghanistan speech caused nary a tremble in the polls. Before he spoke, most Americans didn’t support him. And after? His popularity continues to sink.

It was positively painful to watch Gen. Stanley McChrystal try to explain how you can win by not losing in his Tuesday congressional testimony. He’s doing the president’s bidding, not following a leader who has a clear idea of how to win a war.



It’s not only that President Obama is naïve and ignorant of history and the roles of our military and intelligence communities in world affairs. It’s mostly his inability to lead.

Leadership isn’t an intangible: it’s the ability to convince and inspire people to follow. His legislative successes aren’t proof that he’s a leader. To the contrary: Obama has pronounced big ideas that were already on the liberals’ agenda page. He merely turned them loose and then failed to lead them in the particulars -- the practicabilities and costs -- of the ideas.

On everything from the phony “stimulus” package to socialist health care, Obama is a cheerleader, not a real leader. It’s not just because he is young. It’s that he’s ignorant of important principles and completely at odds with the fact that America is a superpower.

Just consider his Afghanistan speech in the context of his June Cairo speech. Obama is reaching out his open hand to the Islamic radicals in disregard of how many times they slap it away.

In 1899 at the age of 25, Winston Churchill wrote some of the most profound paragraphs of his life.
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
~ The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), Volume II pp. 248-250.
At such a young age Churchill’s understanding of Islam and its goal of supreme world dominance is uncanny.

The leaders of “the greatest generation,” the generation that sacrificed hundreds of thousands of American men and women in World War II, understood the importance of achieving victory and of supporting the men and women sent to the front lines every day to protect our nation and the world from tyranny. There were no political considerations to determine how a President “felt” before ordering our nation to war against its enemies. When we were attacked on December 7, 1941, we responded with all of the might a great nation could muster.

Today we are in a Global War on Terror. The United States was attacked by Islamic terrorist’s on September 11, 2001, resulting in the deaths of almost 3,000 innocent men, women and children. One of America’s great war time leaders, President George W. Bush, along with a war time Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, responded. Their policies kept America safe for 8 years and liberated millions. Today, Barack Obama, giving a pallid imitation of a President, has chosen to appease our enemies around the world in his misguided effort to mollify those that would kill us.

The touchy, feely, feminization attitude that permeates American society has found its way to our military decision makers. Our institutions of war with long rich histories of producing courageous war fighters are now producing leaders that are being trained to better understand and be sensitive to our enemies feelings and concerns rather than how to defeat and destroy them.

There are very few leaders today who could have made the wrenching decisions to bomb Dresden, Tokyo or Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those decisions were instrumental in ending World War II and saved millions of American lives. The deaths of civilians as collateral damage while horrible and unfortunate are an intimate and inextricable part of war. Historians will continue to debate the number of lives that would have been saved had the Atomic bomb been ready and used earlier. How many American fathers, husbands, son’s and brothers would have survived had the war been shortened?

Afghanistan is arguably one of the most desolate, insignificant 4th world countries on our planet. It is not Kazakhstan, a country flush with gas and oil, diamonds and gold. Other than Kabul, it is a nation divided by tribes and regions, controlled by warlords. The Western dreams of a centralized government for Afghanistan are just that, dreams. After 9/11 the U.S. conquered Afghanistan killing or capturing most of those responsible for the attack on America and driving out the Taliban. Then we abandoned her like a West African aids victim. If America did not learn from the repercussions of abandonment and is not diligent and committed once again in its efforts to destroy the Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan, then all of those who have died in Afghanistan and continue to die will die in vain.

At no time in U.S. history has an American president ever half heartedly expanded a war only to advise his enemy that the expansion is temporary. Obama’s decision to provide 30,000 more troops to help defeat the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the correct decision if we expect to prevent safe haven for the terrorists. However, telegraphing his intentions to withdraw our troops in 18 months is misguided and will prove deadly to our soldiers and marines as well as our intelligence experts. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a successful military campaign that did not depend upon reliable, actionable intelligence. I can tell you from personal experience that it is virtually impossible to devise a human intelligence network, humint, when assets are convinced that there is no future or reason for them to cooperate with you.

The message to the warlords in the tribal regions of Afghanistan should be simple and clear. We are leaving. There will be no more American bloodshed in Afghanistan. If you want our continued financial assistance or our friendship, then you must not allow safe harbor to the enemies of the United States. If you do, there will be devastating consequences. There will be Dresden. And we must deliver.


Wayne Simmons was recruited by the CIA in 1973 while in the U.S. Navy. He became part of an Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Group where for 27 years he worked against Narco terroris's, Arms Smugglers, Counterfeiters, Cyber-terrorist's and Industrial and Economic Espionage.

Keep fighting to do away with Abortion

December 10, 2009

Mexican Victories Underscore Global Pro-Life Trend
By Piero A. Tozzi, J.D.

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Mexican pro-lifers were elated when the Vera Cruz amended its state constitution last month to protect life from the moment of conception, joining 16 other Mexican states. The vote set the stage for a possible amendment to the federal constitution: under Mexico's constitution, approval by a majority of the 32 state legislatures and two-thirds of the bicameral Congress is a prerequisite for any federal amendment.

Mexican abortion advocates who cheered last year's limited Supreme Court decision upholding a liberalized Mexico City law did not foresee such a popular reaction in favor of life. The court there had deferred to the legislature while declining to hold that abortion is a constitutional right.

Nor is Mexico's experience unique – it is consistent with a string of victories in favor of life this past year around the globe that has heartened defenders of the unborn. These victories undercut the argument that a liberalized "customary" global norm on abortion is evolving.

First and foremost was this summer's successful reform of the Dominican Republic's constitution, which now declares that "the right to life is inviolable from conception until death." The nation also tightened its penal law protection of unborn life.

East Timor's parliament likewise rejected a liberalized abortion law in June, passing instead a very tight law recognizing that life "from the moment of conception" is entitled to protection.

Honduras' legislature passed a law banning use of "emergency contraception," the high-hormone "morning after" pill, over concern that it may function as an abortifacient by preventing implantation.

The Constitutional Court of Peru similarly found due to the morning after pill's possible abortifacient effects, the drug could not be distributed in public health facilities. Both Peru's and Honduras' constitutions protect pre-natal life.

Concern over demographic collapse has spurred South Korea to stop turning a blind eye to violations of its abortion law. And at this year's United Nations Commission on Population and Development meeting, Japan and Russia issued strong pro-natalist statements, reflecting similar concerns.

Abortion advocates have long argued that abortion liberalization is an unstoppable global trend. An article last year by Reed Boland and Laura Katzive which made such a claim now looks in need of revision. Critics contend their case was overstated to begin with: while acknowledging that Nicaragua and El Salvador had passed laws banning abortion, the article downplayed evident countertrends to liberalization in countries such as Poland and the United States, where the Supreme Court upheld a partial-birth abortion ban.

Not wishing to overstate matters themselves, some Mexican pro-lifers, though buoyed by the state-level developments, caution that congressional support may not be sufficient for a federal amendment. They also note that the Supreme Court has yet to rule on a challenge to Baja California's state amendment.

Other Latin American commentators warn that Uruguayan voters recently replaced outgoing pro-life socialist President Tabaré Vázquez, who had defied his party by vetoing a bill liberalizing abortion, with another socialist who lacks Vazquez' principled commitment to life at all its stages.

On balance, however, the trend toward protection of life this past year has been marked.

Abortion myths and facts. Will the U.N. listen?

December 10, 2009

Permissive Abortion Laws May Be Hazardous To Mothers' Health, Per New Report
By Samantha Singson


(NEW YORK – C-FAM) A new report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) shows that countries with restrictive abortion laws are often the leaders in reducing maternal mortality, and those with permissive laws often lag. According to the report, the pro-life nation of Ireland has topped the global rankings once again with the best maternal health performance.

Abortion advocates have attempted to push an international "right to abortion," claiming that restrictive laws force women to seek unsafe abortion, which in turn leads to high maternal mortality. In October, the Guttmacher Institute released a report on global abortion calling on states to "expand access to legal abortion and ensure that safe, legal abortion services are available to women in need." Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute, asserted that "in much of the developing world, abortion remains highly restricted, and unsafe abortion is common and continues to damage women's health and threaten their survival."

An examination and comparison of several countries included in the WEF survey show that legal abortion does not mean lower maternal mortality rates. 


Both Ireland and Poland, favorite targets of the abortion lobby for their strong restrictions on abortion, have better maternal mortality ratios than the United States. Ireland ranks first in the survey with 1 death for every 100,000 live births. In recent years Poland has tightened its abortion law and ranks number 27 on the list with 8 deaths per 100,000. In the United States where there are virtually no restrictions on abortion, the maternal mortality ratio is 17 out of 100,000 live births.

Other regions of the world show similar trends. The African nation with the lowest maternal mortality rate is Mauritius, a country with some of the continent's most protective laws for the unborn. On the other end of the spectrum is Ethiopia, which has decriminalized abortion in recent years in response to global abortion lobby pressure. Ethiopia's maternal death rate is 48 times higher than in Mauritius. South Africa has the continent's most liberal abortion laws and also a high maternal mortality ratio of 400 deaths per 100,000.

Chile, with constitutional protection for the unborn, outranks all other South American countries as the safest place for women to bear children. The country with the highest maternal mortality is Guyana, with a rate 30 times higher than in Chile. Guyana has allowed abortion without almost any restriction since in 1995. Ironically, one of two main justifications used for liberalizing Guyana’s law was to enhance the "attainment of safe motherhood" by eliminating deaths and complications associated with unsafe abortion. 


Similarly in Asia, Nepal, where there is no restriction on the procedure, has one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates. The lowest in the region is Sri Lanka, with a rate fourteen times lower than that of Nepal. According to the pro-abortion public interest law firm Center for Reproductive Rights, Sri Lanka has among the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. 


Pro-lifers emphasize that the WEF report reinforces their contention that skilled birth attendants and access to emergency obstetric care should be the focus of maternal mortality reduction efforts, rather than increasing access to legal abortion.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

A Socialist Lesbian working for USCCB?

I have no use whatsoever for the USCCB.

In it's entirety, and emphasis mine;

Connection between USCCB and gay rights activist sparks controversy

Washington D.C., Dec 4, 2009 / 10:43 pm (CNA).- Conservative blogs were buzzing on Friday with the discovery that a member of the USCCB's Subcommittee on Catholic Health Care is an active homosexual and gay rights activist. However, though Mary Kay Henry's bio states that she is a labor adviser to the U.S. bishops, the USCCB communications director told CNA “she is not a consultant.”

Henry, the international executive vice president for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was recently named one of the nation's "Top 25 Women in Healthcare" for 2009 by Modern Healthcare. Her biography at the SEIU website explains that “Her faith and values as a practicing Roman Catholic led her to pursue union organizing as a vocation.”

“Mary Kay is also active in the fight for immigration reform and gay and lesbian rights. She is a founding member of SEIU's gay and lesbian Lavender Caucus,” her description continues.

According to SEIU, “The Lavender Caucus is the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/ Transgender (L/G/B/T) Caucus of the Service Employees International Union whose purpose is to facilitate open and respectful communication between the L/G/B/T community and the labor movement.”

The last line of Henry's SEIU bio reads, “She and her partner, Paula Macchello, have been together for 20 years.”

Henry is listed on the USCCB website as a member of the Subcommittee on Justice, Peace, and Human Development who helped produce the working paper, “A Fair and Just Workplace: Principles and Practices for Catholic Health Care.”

ModernHealthCare.com also mentions that Henry is a labor adviser to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Catholic Health Care & Work Subcommittee.

However, in an email asking to confirm Henry’s advisory role at the USCCB, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, the conference media director simply told CNA, “She is not a consultant.”

CNA spoke with another woman in the Justice, Peace and Human Development office at the USCCB who said a press release on the topic would be available on Friday afternoon.

But by Friday night, no press release had been posted on the USCCB’s website.

Similarly, a call from CNA to Henry was not returned.
Soooo.... the USCCB has knowingly and willingly hired someone who is not only morally disordered, this chick also regularly engages in intrinsically evil and perverted sexual acts.

And she's a Socialist.

Oh, and she's also saddled-up with the SEIU ObaThugs.

Why am I not surprised?
posted by Vir Speluncae Catholicus

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

A Jesuit making sense, all is not lost.

Hope For The Jesuits After All
In it's entirety from LifeSiteNews.com

A solid, common sense retort to the condescending and sneering theological milquetoasts better known as Progressive Catholics (read: Catholics for Obama) and their ilk that over-populate more than a few parishes, rectories and chanceries.

Commentary: On Being an 'Ultra-Catholic'
In the contemporary world, the real enemy of the liberal culture is the "fanatic." He holds something.

By Rev. James V. Schall, SJ

Note: Rev. James V. Schall, S.J., teaches political science at Georgetown University. His latest book, The Mind That Is Catholic, is published by Catholic University of America Press.

December 7, 2009 (InsideCatholic.com) - A friend wrote me about a school principal, a religious sister, speaking to a parent and requesting school funds. The gentleman was described as an "ultra-Catholic." My friend asked me: "What is that, do you know?" Evidently, the "non-ultra" principal thought it all right to siphon needed cash from the "ultra" parent. No strings were attached. Once the funds were donated, the non-ultra establishment would go its non-ultra way. The ultra was good for his cash, if he still had any. His ideas were, well, ultra.

Clearly, I cannot resist taking a stab at defining what a modern ultra-Catholic is. Some temptations are difficult to resist. Briefly, in today's multi-descriptor world, an ultra-Catholic is one who is a believing Catholic, a fairly rare bird. The country is full of ex-, disagreeing, non-practicing, right-to-choose, leave-me-alone Catholics. They tell us that they are better than their hapless co-religionists who naively think Catholicism is credibly the most intelligent thing on the public or private scene. In the public area, the most often cited "authority" on what Catholics believe is the dissenter. Catholics are the one group about which no one has to speak accurately.

A be-knighted ultra-Catholic holds the Nicene Creed as true. He thinks divine authority exists in the Church. He knows that he, a sinner, needs forgiveness. But he does not make his sins into some social-justice crusade. He does odd things like go to Mass on Sundays, even in Latin. He thinks it is fine to have children. He prefers to work for a living. He also knows that the Church is under siege in the culture. He belongs to the real minority.

The word "ultra" is Latin, meaning "beyond." We have things like ultra viruses, ultrasounds, and ultraviolet rays. In the Middle Ages, a pope was called "ultramontane" if he came not from Italy but from over the mountains. In France in the modern era, the ultramontanists were those Catholics who kept alliance with Rome. Jesuits, perish the thought, were said to belong to this alien group in the Gallican regime. Ultramontanists did not think the French government was divine. This latter view was considered to be rather extreme. I know this negative view of French glory is difficult for the average contemporary to grasp. We find divine authority neither in Rome nor in Paris but only in ourselves.

An ultra-Catholic today, however, is one who strives to do what Aquinas did: He distinguished between those who willingly practice virtue, because they understand that it is the noble thing to do, and those who practice it just to observe the minimum of the law.

In what is hopefully a pioneer endeavor, we even have a bishop explaining to a Kennedy what it means to be a Catholic. Bishop Thomas Tobin in Providence read what Congressman Kennedy said in the Congressional Record about his being a Catholic but still not "agreeing" with everything the Church held -- a highly unoriginal position, to be sure.

The bishop wondered just what it was that the congressman did not hold, and whether these "un-held" things were central positions in the Church -- which, of course, they were. From the beginning, when this selective view of Catholicism first appeared, local bishops did not similarly inquire of politicians who invoked this fuzzy doctrine of themselves deciding what is Catholic, as if the politician were actually himself the pope.

Now about this ultra-Catholic character: We have all laughed at people said to be "holier than the Church." This latter remark is not a compliment. Unlike the congressman from Rhode Island, some Catholics add things instead of subtracting them, as is the current fashion. Usually, the additions are not really wrong or bad. Most devotions, like the scapulars, are additions in this sense. Aquinas said that adding to the law was not the problem; taking things away from it was.

In the contemporary world, the real enemy of the liberal culture is the "fanatic." He holds something. We have now reached the point where the fanatic is pretty much identified with the ultra-Catholic. What is dangerous is not some heretical notion of Christianity; it is Christianity itself, especially in its Catholic form. When many Catholics themselves do not know what they are and hold, we distinguish the Christian who defines his own beliefs from the one who holds the self-evident and revealed truths of the Faith.

When the non-ultra-Catholics identify themselves with a disordered culture, the ultra-Catholic is left standing by himself. The popes address their documents to "men of good will." We read in the Gospel of John: "I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them." Evidently, not all men have good will.

(Reprinted with permission from http://www.insidecatholic.com/)
posted by Vir Speluncae Catholicus

This is what is known as Catholicly correct, Muslim style!

December 7, 2009
OBAMAS WOULD LIKE TO NEUTER CHRISTMAS
In yesterday’s New York Times, there was an article about White House social secretary Desirée Rogers. In it, reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote:“When former social secretaries gave a luncheon to welcome Ms. Rogers earlier this year, one participant said, she surprised them by suggesting the Obamas were planning a ‘non-religious Christmas….’” This same participant said that “the Obamas did not intend to put the manger scene on display”(this was confirmed by the White House). Indeed, as Stolberg wrote,“there had been internal discussions about making Christmas more inclusive and whether to display the crèche.” Catholic League president Bill Donohue addressed this issue today: Unlike almost all Americans—including atheists—the Obamas do not give their children Christmas gifts. We know this because Barack bragged about this last year to People magazine. So it should come as no big surprise that he and his wife would like to neuter Christmas in the White House. That’s their natural step—to ban the public display of Christian symbols. Have any doubts? Last April, Georgetown University was ordered to put a drape over the name of Jesus as a condition of the president speaking there. If the Obamas want to deprive their children of celebrating Christmas, that is their business. It is the business of the public to hold them accountable for the way they celebrate Christmas in the White House. We know one thing for sure: no other administration ever entertained internal discussions on whether to display a nativity scene in the White House.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Medicare/Medigap plan changes?

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING OF WHAT THEY ARE GOING TO DO TO SENIORS WITH THE MEDICARE/MEDI-GAP PLANS,
ANYONE ON MEDICARE STILL WANT THE CHANGES OBAMA PROMISED?: CALL YOUR PROVIDER TO ASCERTAIN IF THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

By David B Miller
Healthcare costs that are not covered by standard Medicare plans are not left uncovered with Medigap, also known as Medicare Supplement plans. Seniors, you are eligible for Medicare coverage if you are at least 65 years of age and/or have a qualifying disability. As the policies currently stand, there are 12 Supplement plans assigned the letters A through L. Each plan is important to consider for certain benefits relevant to your current situation, geographic location and health conditions. A basic change is occurring to all current plans with an addition of hospice care. Plan G will be undergoing a further alteration, that of a boost from 80 percent to 100 percent coverage for excess charges.

The plans that are being done away with altogether come June 2010 are Plans E, H, I and J. In addition, all Medicare Supplement plans will be stripped of their preventative care and at-home-recovery benefits. All seniors, no matter your current plan, are advised to review your plan in order to better make an informed decision about whether to keep your plan or switch to one of the new ones to be introduced. If your plan is being eliminated, you really have no other option than to review and compare the new rules of different coverage options.

Remember that while these changes may be frustrating and present a hassle right now, its purpose is to present you with better coverage at a lower cost. There will be further changes than those mentioned here, in the form of rates for deductibles, co-pays and benefits you receive from different Medicare Supplement plans. Since there will naturally be an increase in expenses for insurance companies offering healthcare, many will be discontinuing certain Medicare and Medigap options in an effort to offset these costs. Talk with your plan provider to review your options and become informed about any changes you may not have been aware of.

Dave Miller recommends visiting this updated informative site about Medicare Supplement Plans. Visit this unique site at http://www.Over65Insure.com

P.S. I just called AARP, the Customer Service officer named David stated, that if your already have those plans and wish to keep them, you will not be forced to make a change, but the changes like the preventative care(like flu shots) and higher deductibles does not sound good.And this is before any of the healthcare bills they are planning on are put into force. The first to suffer will be the seniors!

Call your Senators(even if they won't listen), they keep count of the amount of calls they receive, and let them know if they hurt the Seniors, we won't forget comes election day!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

OUR GOVERNMENT WANTS TO SAVE MONEY AND JOBS, WHAT ABOUT NOT SPENDING THIS MONEY?

December 3, 2009

UNFPA Pushing for Hundreds of Billions for Family Planning As ICPD Era Draws to a Close
By Samantha Singson


(NEW YORK – C-FAM) At the United Nations this week, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) organized a commemorative seminar on the 1995 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and, in a look ahead, urged states to renew their commitment to the program, calling for over $200 billion (US) in funding for "sexual and reproductive health and family planning" alone.

UNFPA's Ann Pawliczko gave a financial perspective of the ICPD Program of Action and presented a "revised ICPD Global Cost Estimate" for 2009 through 2015, when the ICPD program is scheduled to end. Apart from $212 billion (US) for "sexual and reproductive health / family planning," UNFPA estimates that another $22.5 billion would be needed for "family planning direct costs" for the same time period.

At the seminar, attended by less than 80 individuals representing government delegations and civil society, panelists presented a retrospective of the "groundbreaking" ICPD conference and sought to outline a way forward. Claiming that with only five years left to fulfill the commitments made at the ICPD and achieve the interrelated Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), "governments are called upon to redouble their efforts toward the integration of population and development policies."

Opening the seminar, Dr. Werner Haug, UNFPA's Technical Division director, acknowledged that population has always been a "thorny and difficult" topic and that countries must now decide how to proceed after the Cairo Program of Action expires at the end of 2014.

Dr. Stan Bernstein, a UNFPA senior policy advisor, called the Cairo consensus "novel" for its person-centered approach rather than just on numbers and demographics and praised the Cairo's reframing of population programs to a "customized approach" which seeks to provide couples and individuals with the means to achieve a smaller family size.

Hania Zlotnik of the UN Population Division emphasized the alleged benefits of population reduction, touting that declining fertility "has potentially positive effects on economic growth" such as a reduced number of dependents, an increased number of workers, particularly more women workers since they are having less children. Zlotnik lamented that funding for family planning was on the decline and warned that "the reproductive health of women and couples cannot be assured if women don't have the means to control their fertility."

Laura Laski, yet another UNFPA representative, focused solely on "reproductive rights and universal access to sexual and reproductive health." Laski lauded the progress made since the Cairo conference and highlighted the linkage to the MDGs. Laski pointed to the controversial MDG target on "universal access to reproductive health by 2015" as the new "center point" for future work on "sexual and reproductive health." (Critics note that states rejected a separate goal on "reproductive health" in 2001, only to see it reappear as a "target" in the annex of a Secretary-General's report in 2007.)

Panelists concluded that the "chief constraint" to realizing the Cairo program of action is the "lack of adequate funding" and urged states to increase their political will, renew their Cairo commitment and "increase allocations for population activities" as a matter of priority.

The UNFPA seminar was co-organized by UNITAR, the UN Institute for Training and Research, as part of the UN's celebration of the ICPD 15th anniversary.


(How about putting this on the ballot and finding out what the American people feel about spending tyhis money?)

As I had predicted, the UN WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD, IRREGARDLESS OF YOUR NATIONS CONSTITUTION.

December 3, 2009

European Court of Human Rights Puts Pro-life Ireland in Hot Seat
By Piero A. Tozzi, J.D.


(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Irish abortion laws and sovereignty stand in the dock next week when the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) hears a challenge to Ireland's constitutional protection of life "from conception."

Three petitioners in the case A, B & C v. Ireland allege that they were forced to travel overseas to obtain abortions, undergoing unnecessary expenses and hardship due to the nation's pro-life laws. They claim violations of various rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Third-party interveners Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, the European Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defense Fund (on behalf of Family Research Council), contend that it is "Ireland's sovereign right to determine when life begins" and what rights attach to pre-natal life. They also claim that domestic remedies have not been exhausted, and that therefore the ECHR lacks jurisdiction to hear the case.

Ireland's constitution "acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right." The country's recent approval of the Lisbon Treaty after receiving guarantees that its pro-life constitution would remain unaffected has raised the stakes of the Court's decision.

Skeptics of the ECHR's ability to be impartial where "abortion rights" are implicated point to the court's 2007 ruling Tysiąc v. Poland, which held that Poland had violated the European Convention by denying a woman a "therapeutic" abortion that allegedly would have saved her eyesight. The woman there had obtained a certificate from a general practitioner as a prerequisite to obtaining an abortion allowable under Polish law, which remains among Europe's most protective of the unborn. Five medical experts overruled the general practitioner, determining that the ongoing deterioration in eyesight was unrelated to her pregnancy – a finding seconded post-delivery by a review panel of three additional experts. Despite this, as the dissent pointed out, the ECHR credited the one generalist's opinion over that of eight experts to reach the desired result.

Jakob Cornides, a European legal commentator who has criticized the Tysiąc decision, distinguished that case from the present one, noting that, "rightly or wrongly, Tysiąc was premised upon the notion that Ms. Tysiąc's contemplated abortion would have been legal under Polish law, and if lawful, it should have been available. In Ireland, however, the constitution protects unborn life and legislation indisputably prohibits abortion."

Cornides further points out that "the Court so far has avoided taking a position on whether abortion should be legal or not, leaving this question to national legislators. It would indeed be inconceivable that countries like Ireland or Poland, to name just two, would have signed up to the Convention if they foresaw an explicit or implicit 'right to abortion.'"

Irish voters overwhelmingly approved Ireland's pro-life constitutional provision in a 1983 referendum. Pro-lifers further note that Ireland has the world's lowest rate of maternal mortality in childbirth, as confirmed in a recent report by the World Economic Forum

The great American Congress at work?

Boxer wants climate e-mail hacking probed

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 (UPI)-- The leaking of e-mails purporting to undermine climate change theories should be criminally investigated, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Wednesday.

The e-mails, written by British scientists at the University of East Anglia, were obtained by hackers and show the director of the university's Climate Research Unit talking about ways to strengthen the proofs for global warming, The Hill newspaper reported.

Critics of climate change point to the e-mails as evidence of deceit in global warming theories.

"You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate,'" Boxer, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said during a committee meeting. "The main issue is,'Are we facing global warming or are we not?' I'm looking at these e-mails, that even though they were stolen, are now out in the public."(what about the email stolen from Sarah Palin? Not one word about that, and since when is it the job of the Congress to investigate a crime that had happened outside of the United States?)

The committee's top Republican, Sen. James Inhofe, has asked that the e-mails be the subject of a committee hearing. The Hill reported Boxer may grant his request, but said that criminal investigations would be part of any hearings.

WHAT? Are we going to investigate every crime that happens outside of the USA? ARE YOU FRIGHTENED
THAT AL GORE WILL BE FOUND OUT TO BE ANOTHER Mahoff? He is an American Citizen(though you would never know that from his actions), investigate him,find out how much money(besides the Nobel Prize money) he has postured himself to make over the whole world on a "Climate Frenzy", and he is the one who lit the match! Oh I forgot he is a Democrat, not a Republican. Great Visibility Mr
President!
JMHO

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Europe Grows A Backbone (Finally)

Interesting vote projection out of Switzerland, here's some of it; (Emphasis and comments mine.)

Projection: Swiss vote to ban new minarets
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS (AP)

GENEVA — Swiss voters approved a move to ban the construction of minarets in a Sunday vote on a right-wing initiative that labeled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a widely respected polling institute showed.

The projections based on partial returns say Swiss swung from only 37 percent supporting the proposal a week ago to 59 percent in the actual voting.

Claude Longchamp, leader of the widely respected gfs.bern polling institute, said the projection contracted by state-owned DRS television forecasts approval of the initiative by more than half the country's 26 cantons, meaning it will become a constitutional amendment.

The nationalist Swiss People's Party describes minarets, the distinctive spires used in most countries for calls to prayer, as symbols of rising Muslim political and religious power that could eventually turn Switzerland into an Islamic nation.

"Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure — we don't have that in Switzerland, and we do not want to introduce it" said Ulrich Schlueer, co-president of the Initiative Committee to ban minarets.

The move by the People's Party, the country's largest party in terms of popular support and membership in parliament, is part of a broader European backlash against a growing Muslim population. It has stirred fears of violent reactions in Muslim countries and an economically disastrous boycott by wealthy Muslims who bank, shop and vacation in Switzerland. (Switerland did just fine for centuries without "wealthy moslems" to prop-up their economy. Can't they still?)

Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Zurich, said, "The initiators have achieved something everyone wanted to prevent, and that is to influence and change the relations to Muslims and their social integration in a negative way."
Hatipoglu said if in the long term the anti-Islam atmosphere continues, "Muslims indeed will not feel safe anymore." (Simply due to no more minarettes? Tough shit. Haul ass.)

The seven-member Cabinet that heads the Swiss government has spoken out strongly against the initiative, and local officials and rights defenders objected to campaign posters showing minarets rising like missiles from the Swiss flag next to a fully veiled woman. (Of course.)

When the vote becomes official, I'll post the results.
posted by Vir Speluncae Catholicus

So SAD: (Sorrowful And Destructive)

40 years of Missale Romanum and the new Roman Rite



Forty years ago today, the First Sunday of Advent, one of the weakest Popes in Church history, Paul VI, mandated the Novus Ordo Missae (New Order of Mass) in the Roman Rite. After almost 1,500 years of the Traditional Latin Mass, the same Mass that had conquered entire continents for Christ and had lifted thousands of men and women to the altar as saints, Pope Paul saddled us with this.

What was the reaction of the Roman Catholic world, who had never asked for a change in their Mass in the first place? Millions left the Church, vocations hit rock bottom, and belief in almost every Catholic doctrine, most especially the Eucharist, hit (and remains at) an all time low. Well done!

There are many (especially amongst my friends) who will defend the novelty of the New Mass to the day they die. I, on the other hand, look at the destruction it left in its wake, and wonder….how did we ever allow this to happen?

Martin Luther, wherever he may be, is still laughing.
_________________________________________________________________
40 years of Missale Romanum and the new Roman Rite - II: a Requiem, by Paul VI

On the First Sunday of Advent (November 30), 1969, the New Missal entered into force officially (it would take a few years before it was to be completely phased in worldwide).

In his words in the General Audience which immediately preceded that date, Pope Paul VI was clear:
We may notice that pious persons will be the ones most disturbed, because, having their respectable way of listening to Mass, they will feel distracted from their customary thoughts and forced to follow those of others.
...
Not Latin, but the spoken language, will be the main language of the Mass. To those who know the beauty, the power, the expressive sacrality of Latin, its replacement by the vulgar language is a great sacrifice: we lose the discourse of the Christian centuries, we become almost intruders and desecrators [intrusi e profani] in the literary space of sacred expression, and we will thus lose a great portion of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual fact that is the Gregorian Chant. We will thus have, indeed, reason for being sad, and almost for feeling lost: with what will we replace this angelic language? It is a sacrifice of inestimable price.
posted by PreVat2

Saturday, November 28, 2009

The Democratic "Change" they promised the American People?

What happened to Obama's pledge of "No more politics as usual" and complete disclosure, openness, and accountability? 2000 pages in a bill is openness?
Over 2000 pages in a bill, is called HIDING THE TRUTH!


A little more info on how Senators and Democraps vote, and why, with the phony "Change" slogan, that they had gotten the voters to fall for!

Smokes-for-votes?
Pay-To-Play?
Is this the CHANGE Americans voted for?
In a landmark vote to bring government-run health care legislation to debate, Senators Mary Landrieu (La.) and Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) sold out the people they were elected to represent in exchange for what?

Sen. Landrieu got park barrel spending – that’s right $100 million worth of it for Louisiana. What’s even worse is she was brazen enough to brag about what she got in exchange for voting against the people of Louisiana!

Sen. Lincoln represents a state where 54% of the people are opposed to the proposed health care legislation and still she voted with her liberal party leaders over the wishes of Arkansans.

What’s even more frightening is what they voted FOR: a requirement that EVERY American buy a government-designed insurance plan, even if it’s more expensive than what they are paying today.

In addition to losing your right to choose your plan, if you don’t do what the government says, a family of four will face a fine of up to $6,750!!

Sincerely,
American Future Fund Political Action

Friday, November 27, 2009

Don't just sit there, pick up your telephone, and call your Senators, and Representatives

The Liberals are the most danger to the American people, particularly since they have control of Both houses and the Presidency.
Nothing is sacred to them. they (as the Russians
did), are looking to destroy the Family, and take control of your children, just as the Nazi's did with their youth programs. We have always been a
unique country in this world, not a dictatorship,not communist, but free citizens of the worlds greatest nation. Obuma, and Pewlousy, and Dingy Harry, are looking to take that away from you, any way they can. The Democraps have to be taken out of power, and it is not too late yet.
The American "Silent Majority" must continue to speak out, and vote out the Liberals now, while we still have a free vote, although judging from the actions of ACORN, and their involvement with the elections, it is going to be harder and harder for us to acchieve that. This is not a game, this is your lives and the lives of your children, and you had better stand up and be counted while you can.
Telephone your Congressmen, and Senators, even if you believe they will not answer you or take heed of your voices, when you vote them out of office, believe me, ALL OF THE LIBERALS WILL HEAR YOUR VOICES! Speak up now, later you may not be able to.
JMHO
Itzik

First step in taking charge of your children, over your objections!

On the 20th Anniversary of the Child Rights Convention, US Pressured to Ratify
By Samantha Singson


(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Last week in New York, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) with the release of a special report on the impact of the treaty. While many used the anniversary to celebrate the CRC, some expressed concern about the growing pressure on the United States to ratify the treaty, saying that the treaty’s rights-based emphasis touted by UNICEF is fundamentally flawed.

UNICEF's special edition State of the World's Children entitled "Celebrating 20 Years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child" highlights developments made in the child rights arena. The UNICEF report described the CRC as "not only a historic document" but "a moral compass" that guides people all over the world. The report boasts that the CRC "has already altered the landscape of children's rights" but that it is still far from being realized.

The report uses anecdotal evidence from CRC proponents to detail the "success" of the convention in the last two decades. According to UNICEF, the CRC has resulted "in the increased usage of 'child rights' language in the vernacular of national and international legal documents, policies, programs and advocacy."

While the UNICEF report returns to a focus on child survival, the report builds on the "rights-based approach" first espoused in the 1990s. According to the UNICEF report, "Under the Convention, children are rights holders rather than objects of charity. Fulfilling these rights is no longer an option for States parties but an obligation that governments have pledged to meet."

Calls for United States (US) ratification from United Nations (UN) officials and international child rights advocacy groups have significantly increased over this anniversary year and especially since Barack Obama was elected President. The Obama administration has expressed its support of US ratification. During the US election campaign, candidate Obama expressed dismay that the United States was only one of two countries which are not party to the treaty. Earlier this year, US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice was reported as saying that the US was considering "when and how it might be possible to join" the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Conservative groups in the United States, however, point to concerns regarding the 'rights-based approach' and highlight problems with the CRC monitoring mechanism. They assert that children should not be totally autonomous rights bearers completely separate from their parents. Opponents are concerned that US ratification of the CRC will erode parental rights and sovereignty.

Critics point out that while the UNICEF report contains a lot of anecdotal evidence regarding the positive effects of the treaty, it is nearly silent on the work of the CRC committee, the body charged with monitoring state compliance with the treaty and consisting of 18 "experts" in child rights.

The report claims that the Convention "sets out common standards" yet leaves room for State parties of finding their "own way of implementing the treaty." Over the years, the CRC committee has chastised countries for allowing corporal punishment, mandated governments to increase state-sponsored day care, pushed recognition of a child's right to privacy "especially in the family," and pushed for adolescent family planning and reproductive health and sex education programs, despite possible parental objections.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Call Your Senator Today!

Dear CatholicVoteAction.org Member,

The stage has been set.

On Monday, the Senate will begin debate on their version of health care “reform.”

The Bishops Conference have called the Senate bill an “enormous disappointment” and “completely unacceptable,” and have urged every Catholic and conscientious citizen to speak out.

Call your Senator at 202-224-3121. Send them on Thanksgiving break with a message: “NO taxpayer funding for abortion!”

Second, consider chipping in $20 to help us with our campaign.
https://www.catholicvoteaction.org/donations.php

Here is what we are facing…

The Senate legislation provides federal funding (taxpayer dollars!) for insurance plans that cover abortion. The plan also includes a mandatory “abortion surcharge” that would force pro-life people like you and me to pay for other people’s abortions.

Moreover, if the current legislation is approved, the Catholic Church and other religious institutions could be forced to provide contraceptives and cover other morally unacceptable treatments for its employees.

The bill also does not provide any protections for the elderly and those with special needs.

Abortion, euthanasia, rationing, threats to conscience and privacy… what are we to do?

Behind the long list of moral problems with the current Senate legislation, a fundamental question remains -- is a massive government takeover of health care the right solution to begin with?

Our view is that an entirely new approach is needed. And one that involves the ‘S word’ – subsidiarity.

Subsidi – say what?

Subsidiarity. Archbishop Naumann and Bishop Finn explained it best in their joint pastoral letter:

“Subsidiarity is that principle by which we respect the inherent dignity and freedom of the individual by never doing for others what they can do for themselves and thus enabling individuals to have the most possible discretion in the affairs of their lives.”
Practically speaking, this means that any health care solution should not begin by asking how government (the largest and most centralized organization) can be the big solution provider.
Why not focus instead on solutions that respect the freedom and dignity of people, encourage competition, and enable consumers to help drive down costs? These are achievable goals. But they require a people-first mentality rather than a government-first mindset.

This is why we are now mobilizing the entire CatholicVoteAction network (nearly 500,000 people!) to stop this legislation.

There will be four weeks of intense debate on the Senate legislation with a possible final showdown right before Christmas.


The Time to Act
The issue of abortion funding, the ‘public option’ or the government insurance plan, rights of conscience, and other important issues will be debated. It is CRITICAL that every person who receives this email do something.

Call your Senator, write them a letter, pen an editorial, or visit their local office. Be respectful and courteous, but firmly tell them that you are opposed to any government funding of abortion, no compromises, period.

Second, urge them to rethink this plan altogether. Tell them there are better ways to truly reform health care. And in case they haven’t noticed the recent polls, a majority of Americans agree with us!

Finally, make sure to get your friends and family involved in this important fight. When you see them over Thanksgiving, ask them if they've ever heard of ‘subsidiarity.’ And tell them to call their Senator to oppose any government funding of abortion and any takeover of the healthcare industry.

Let’s work together to urge Congress to seek real reforms that will truly heal our health care ills.

Sincerely,

Brian Burch, President
CatholicVoteAction.org

Monday, November 23, 2009

Here is the Thanksgiving Proclamation by our First President

This is the text of George Washington's October 3, 1789 national Thanksgiving Proclamation; as printed in The Providence Gazette and Country Journal, on October 17, 1789.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.


Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."



Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.



And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.



Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.



G. Washington.


From: newsletter@wallbuilders.com

Happy Thanks Giving, Thank you Almighty God

The tradition of Thanksgiving as a time to focus on God and thank Him for His blessings dates back almost four centuries in America. Colonists held Thanksgiving services in Texas in 1541, in Florida in 1565, and in Virginia in 1607 and 1619, but it is from the Pilgrims that we derive the current tradition of a Thanksgiving that includes prayers to God, a meal with friends, and a time of athletic competition.

The Pilgrims arrived in America in December 1620 and experienced a harsh winter of extreme hunger and starvation in which half of them died. The following summer, the Pilgrims reaped a bountiful harvest. As Pilgrim Edward Winslow (who later became their governor) affirmed, "God be praised, we had a good increase of corn. . . . [and] by the goodness of God, we are far from want."

The grateful Pilgrims therefore declared a three-day feast in December 1621 to thank God and to celebrate with their friends. Ninety Wampanoag Indians joined the fifty Pilgrims for three days of food (which included shellfish, lobsters, turkey, corn bread, berries, deer, and other foods), of athletic games (the young Pilgrim and Wampanoag men engaged in races, wrestling matches, and other athletic events), and of prayer. This celebration – America's first Thanksgiving Festival – was the origin of the holiday that Americans now celebrate each November.The first national Thanksgiving was proclaimed in 1789 by President George Washington, but after Washington, national Thanksgiving proclamations were sporadic; most official Thanksgiving observances occurred at the state level. In fact, by 1815, state governments had issued no less than 1,400 official prayer proclamations, almost half of which were for days of thanksgiving and prayer.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey's Lady's Book (a popular lady's books containing poetry, art work, and articles by America's leading authors) began to lobby for a national Day of Thanksgiving. For nearly three decades, she contacted president after president unt il Abraham Lincoln responded in 1863 by setting aside the last Thursday of that November.

Over the next seventy-five years, presidents faithfully followed Lincoln's precedent, annually declaring a national Thanksgiving Day, but the date of the celebrations varied widely from proclamation to proclamation. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt celebrated Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November and maintained that date year by year throughout his presidency. In 1941, Congress permanently established the fourth Thursday in November as the national Thanksgiving holiday.

As you celebrate Thanksgiving this year, there are several ways in which you can enhance the celebration of America's oldest holiday:



Review the full HISTORY OF THANKSGIVING and share that history with others.


View ORIGINAL THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATIONS. We have posted a number of famous Thanksgiving Proclamations, including the first national Thanksgiving Proclamation by President George Washington in 1789, the 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln that started the modern Thanksgiving tradition, the 1933 Thanksgiving Proclamation of President Roosevelt that established the tradition, and a number of Thanksgiving Proclamations by Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration or Constitution.
Read a famous THANKSGIVING SERMON – the notable sermon preached by the Rev. Thomas Baldwin of Boston in response to President George Washington's 1795 Thanksgiving Proclamation.

Have a blessed and God-filled Thanksgiving!

David Barton






To sign up on the WallBuilders email list and receive future information about historical issues and Biblical values in the culture, visit http://www.wallbuilders.com/.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

THIS IS WORTH READING

by Pam Geller
I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied history all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes, these exist but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about 10 - 15 years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codified into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people whom we know could never pay back? Why? We learned recently that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September.
Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "We the People," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?
We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?). We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)
Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why

He did it with a compliant media - Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and .... change.

And the people surely got what they voted for.(Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and
called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

Don't forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe.
It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years - a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency - it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong, close my eyes, have another latte and ignore what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me; others laugh or think I am foolish, naive, or both.
Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe - and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. But, I do not think I am.

About the author via Google...

Pamela "Atlas" Geller began her publishing career at The New York Daily News and subsequently took over operation of The New York Observer as Associate Publisher. She left The Observer after the birth of her fourth child but remained involved in various projects including American Associates, Ben Gurion University and being Senior Vice-President Strategic Planning and Performance Evaluation at The Brandeis School.The Brandeis School.

After 9/11, Atlas had the veil of oblivion violently lifted from her consciousness and immersed herself in the education and understanding of geopolitics, Islam, terror, foreign affairs and imminent threats the mainstream media and the government wouldn't cover or discuss.

Her website, AtlasShrugged.com , winner of the "Best New Blog" 2005 Jewish and Israeli Blog Award and finalist in the 2005 Weblog Awards, is a counter-terrorism site fighting the great fight, changing the world one word at a time. Leading authorities are regularly interviewed. She routinely confers with leading scholars on the Middle East, Islam, Eurabia, China and Russia. The objective of her website is to cover related but little reported events of great import. She provides an unblinking, glaring examination of global affairs.

A Catholic Genius

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Few men in the English speaking world were as fascinating and as articulate as the late, great William F. Buckley. He was also a devout Roman Catholic who, until the day he died, detested the changes brought in by the Second Vatican Council.

Enjoy this quote from 1979, ten years after the great destruction began.

"As a Catholic, I have abandoned hope for the liturgy, which, in the typical American church, is as ugly and as maladroit as if it had been composed by Robert Ingersoll and H.L. Mencken for the purpose of driving people away.

Incidentally, the modern liturgists are doing a remarkably good job, attendance at Catholic Mass on Sunday having dropped sharply in the 10 years since a few well-meaning cretins got hold of the power to vernacularize the Mass, and the money to scour the earth in search of the most unmusical men and women to preside over the translation.

The next liturgical ceremony conducted primarily for my benefit, since I have no plans to be beatified or remarried, will be my own funeral; and it is a source of great consolation to me that, at my funeral, I shall be quite dead, and will not need to listen to the accepted replacement for the noble old Latin liturgy. Meanwhile, I am practicing Yoga, so that, at church on Sundays, I can develop the power to tune out everything I hear, while attempting, athwart the general calisthenics, to commune with my Maker, and ask Him first to forgive me my own sins, and implore him, second, not to forgive the people who ruined the Mass.."

--from "The Remnant" 1979

About time!

Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience

Drafted on October 20, 2009

Released on November 20, 2009


Preamble

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God's word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire's sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce's leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes - from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.


Declaration

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right - and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation - to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.


Life
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10

Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government. The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense. Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views. The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion. The President says that he wants to reduce the "need" for abortion - a commendable goal. But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors. The elimination of these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth. Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as "the culture of death." We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.

A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable. As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized. For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries. The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo-research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called "therapeutic cloning." This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues. At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and "voluntary" euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of life") were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of "liberty," "autonomy," and "choice."

We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion. We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children. Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and "ethnic cleansing," the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.


Marriage
The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24


This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:32-33


In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God’s creation. In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners with God Himself. Marriage then, is the first institution of human society - indeed it is the institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation. In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as "holy matrimony" to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by God, and blessed by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in the highest esteem.

Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society. Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits - the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live. Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves. Unfortunately, we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the marriage culture in our own country. Perhaps the most telling - and alarming - indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent. Today it is over 40 percent. Our society - and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the national average - is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair. Other indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly high rate of divorce.

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love. We must reform ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce. We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make.

The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law. Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life. In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of their parents’ marital love), we discover the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God's intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to "a more excellent way." As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.

We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage. Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being - the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual - on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.

We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights. They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being "married." It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it? On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand. Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential.

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality - a covenantal union of husband and wife - that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized. Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as "marriages" sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non-marital and immoral. Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends. Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture. But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.

And so it is out of love (not "animus") and prudent concern for the common good (not "prejudice"), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. How could we, as Christians, do otherwise? The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God's creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church. And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.


Religious Liberty
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. Matthew 22:21

The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: "Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God" (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4). Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God - a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason.

Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law - such persons claiming these "rights" are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of "same-sex marriage" in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital "civil unions" scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one's own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of.1 Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.

As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust - and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust - undermine the common good, rather than serve it.

Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King's willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's.



1Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America